October 18th, 2013 by Alexandra Haskell

Patriot Supersonic Rage XT Review

The Patriot Supersonic Rage XT is the answer for consumers looking for an affordable, stylish flash drive with the efficient transfer speeds of USB 3.0. It's a compact flash drive with a rubberized casing, giving it a durability factor for users that are tough on their products. The jolting bright blue on black adds some excitement to the rugged and edgy design. Even though it carries the affordable tag, the drive still posts impressive performance capabilities, Patriot claims read and write speeds of up to 180MB/s and 50MB/s respectively.

The Patriot Supersonic Rage XT is available in the following capacities and street pricings: 32GB for $38, 64GB for $55, and 128GB for $115. All capacity versions are close to, or on par with the $1/GB threshold. All capacities come with 5 year warranties. Our review unit is the 64GB capacity.

Patriot Supersonic Rage XT Specifications

Capacities

32GB (PEF32GSRUSB)

64GB (PEF64GSRUSB)

128GB (PEF128GSRUSB)

Compatibility: USB 2.0 and 3.0, PC and Mac

Performance/speed: Up to 180MB/s

Warranty: 5 years

Dimensions: 53mm x 21.8mm x 11mm

Weight: 0.6 oz

Retractable design to protect USB connecter when not in use

Rubberized housing to protect from wear and tear

Design and Build

The Patriot Supersonic Rage XT measures 53.6mm in length. The compact and stylish graphic design gives the flash drive an edgy attractiveness, and the rubber-coated housing has a more durable feel for the rugged user. One side of the drive shows Patriot branding, while the other side displays the model name and capacity labeling.

This flash drive features a capless design, with a sliding mechanism to access the USB connecter. On the downside, you have to use two hands to expose the connecter, and the mechanism can be somewhat sticky.

Performance

We've compiled other recent flash drive reviews to stack up against the Patriot Supersonic Rage XT. The following comparables are:

Using our Consumer Testing Platform, we measured sequential read/write speeds and random read/write speeds. The Supersonic Rage is a midrange product from Patriot; it's worth noting the higher end comparables are included mostly to show scale and general price bracketing.

In the sequential read/write testing, the Supersonic Rage saw sequential reads of 109.6MB/s and writes of 93.4MB/s, which came up lighter than the spec sheet read numbers of 180MB/s but nearly double the posted writes of 50MB/s. Comparatively, the Supersonic Magnum Patriot's flagship USB drive, posted results of 247MB/s and 151.3MB/s respectively. It's worth noting that the Magnum was also very close to its spec sheet listed 250MB/s read and 160MB/s write. The SanDisk Extreme which is price competitive with the Rage posts numbers of 194.5MB/s and 177.9MB/s.

Turning to random read and write, the Supersonic Rage shows reads of 105.5MB/s but falls under considerable pressure on the random writes with 4.4MB/s. Such behavior is not unexpected for a midrange drive of this nature however and even enthusiast-grade USB drives sometimes suffer from the same behavior. The Patriot Supersonic Magnum came in with 166.3MB/s and 39.1MB/s comparatively and the SanDisk Extreme offered 177.6MB/s read and 43.5MB/s write.

Conclusion

The Patriot Supersonic Rage XT is a stylish and compact flash drive with a rubberized coating for lasting durability. It also comes with the performance aspects of USB 3.0. Patriot quotes speeds up to 180MB/s read and 50MB/s write for all capacities offered. The Patriot Supersonic Rage XT is available in capacities of 32GB for $38, 64GB for $64, and 128GB for $120.

When testing the Patriot Supersonic Rage XT, we found that the drive under delivered a bit in performance, which was surprising since we didn't see that behavior with their enthusiast-grade Supersonic Magnum. Sequential speed results were 109.6MB/s read and 93.4MB/s write. Random speed results were 105.5MB/s read and crawling 4.4MB/s writes. Even so, depending on pricing in retail, the drive is still well made, does very well with sequential work and is a reasonable travel partner for mainstream use cases.

Pros

Durable design

Respectable sequential performance

Cons

Struggles with random write performance

Bottom Line

The Patriot Supersonic Rage XT is an affordable flash drive for the price conscious mainstream consumer. For those who don't need the highest level of performance but still want a capable on the go flash stick, the Rage XT is a good partner.